What's the point of having a rank at a search engine for a specific keyword or phrase if it doesn't send relevant traffic or, even worse, sends no traffic at all? So asks Mike Grehan, overjoyed that ranking has outlived its relevance.

Grehan has been trying to educate his clients for years. Aside from rankings, he has written about relevance feedback and the role it plays in retrieving information on the Web. "I work with a crack team of data-driven analysts," Grehan writes. "We're focused on providing meaningful information to our clients based on an advanced approach to ...Read the whole story...

Mark Rollins reminds us search engines will continue to get smarter, adding services that collect data about consumers' surfing habits. SEO practices will encompass more than just the right keyword phrases and inbound links, but will also tie into social data, testimonials, feedback, reviews, and product comparisons.

SEO will also move toward "visual identification," according to Rollins. Aside from online videos, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which allows users to scan hard copies of books, letters and documents to post on the Web, will prompt this shift, "as users will want to search for information using images, rather than ...Read the whole story...

Hackers are using a combination of SEO and redirects on microsoft.com and irs.gov to install viruses on computers, according to Mark Williams, who summarizes a post from Gary Warner's blog to provide an example. Williams warns consumers that some links are being used to redirect consumers to pages not created either by Microsoft or the government agency.

These pages automatically attempt to load a virus onto the person's computer. "The final step is to use inbound links to insure that the URL pops up high in the search engine," Williams writes. "The criminal will write articles on various ...Read the whole story...

Aaron Wall likens SEOer to those who worked in coal, oil or railroads during years past. The reason: connecting supply and demand. While this holiday season is likely to go down as one of the worst on record, online sales held up better than the rest of the retail market. And search is driving much of the growth in online sales. As foot traffic slowed in brick-and-mortar retail stores, consumers continued to click the "buy" button at select online retailers that seem to know the value of SEO.